THE NAMING OF THE NAME

By David H. Roper

We are continuing in our studies of Old and New Testament characters,
seen against their time. Last week we talked about Abraham and
his call to be a blessing in the midst of his time. Today we want
to look at the call and commission of Moses, as it is found in
the third chapter of Exodus. Let me give you a bit of historical
background to provide the setting.

About fifty years before Moses was born, the Egyptians drove
from the land of Egypt a group of foreign kings called Hyksos,
or Shepherd Kings, who the Egyptians came to despise. The Hyksos
had come from Syria and Palestine, and for about two hundred years
these Asiatics had dominated Egyptian politics. As a result of
their domination, Egyptians came to hate Asiatics, people from
the area of Syria and Palestine, and particularly shepherds. These
people were semi-nomadic, and so they were despised.

As a result of the rule of the Hyksos, the Egyptians instituted
two national policies. One was that of expansion. They were determined
to drive these people out of their borders, so they conquered
all of Syria and Palestine. Then they turned their attention inward
to the elements of Semitic or Asiatic life within Egypt. The people
who were most nearly identified with the Hyksos were the children
of Israel. They were living in the same general area, the Nile
Delta; and because they, like the Hyksos, were Asiatic, the Egyptians
decided to exterminate them. As you know, their policy was one
of both extermination and oppression. As the nation multiplied,
the Egyptians decided to destroy them by killing their newborn
children.

It was during this time that Moses was born. I am sure you
know the account. He is described in Exodus as a beautiful child.
That description is interpreted in Acts as 'beautiful to God".
God saw him in a very special way and had a particular task for
this child. Out of faith, his mother, Jochebed, prepared a little
papyrus ark for him and placed him in the Nile. Under the providence
of God, the Nile carried him into the arms of the daughter of
the Pharaoh. whom we know was Hatshepsut. She became one of the
most powerful women in Egyptian history. She actually became a
pharaoh and ruled from twenty to twenty-five years, adopting male
dress and even wearing a false beard. She ruled over both Lower
and Upper Egypt, and perhaps was one of the most powerful women
in history. This was God's way of providing for his man Moses.

It is ironic that the means the Egyptians employed to exterminate
the Israelites became the means for their deliverance. It was
the decree to destroy the children that resulted in Moses being
taken into the Pharaoh's household. For about forty years he was
trained in the Egyptian court. He received the very best training
available. He was placed in the hands of special scribes in the
court, trained as a mathematician, trained in military strategy,
chemistry, medicine, and he learned a very complicated hieroglyphic
system of writing that took years to master. Moses was trained
in every way as a leader; he received the very best that Egypt
could offer. Josephus, the Jewish historian tells us that at one
time Moses was a general in the Egyptian army and conquered the
land of Ethiopia for Egypt. It was there he gained his Ethiopian
wife, who his sister Miriam later despised.

We know something of the philosophies of Egypt at that time.
Egypt was in a depression when Abraham went there; but at the
time of Moses, Egypt was ascending and becoming the most powerful
nation on the face of the earth. Its kingdom extended from the
Euphrates down into Ethiopia. Egypt had colonies on Cyprus, and
throughout the Aegean Sea. Egyptians believed in their strength.
In fact, their monuments make statement to that effect. "He
trusted in his strength" reads a statement referring to some
of the Pharaohs. One Pharaoh was interred with his bow, and inscribed
on the bow was this statement: "No other man could draw this
bow." The Egyptian philosophy was "Mucho macho".
Strength, power, might, makes right.

That was the environment Moses was raised in, so you can see
something of his thinking as he went out and saw an Egyptian mistreating
one of his brothers, a fellow-Hebrew. We know that the Egyptians
were very cruel. Pictured on their monuments are slave masters
beating slaves. They were a very cruel, harsh people. When Moses
saw one of his brothers being mistreated, he acted in the way
that he felt was most appropriate. He wanted to set things right.
He was the redeemer. And, as you know, he set God's program back
forty years. He went out with all his strength and all his power,
and the net result was frustration--both for his people and for
himself. The Israelites remained in bondage another forty years.

Do you ever feel that way? You set out to right some wrong,
and the result is frustration and destruction. You end up like
Moses, sitting at a well in Midian, wondering, "What in the
world did I do wrong? My heart was right. I put everything I had
into it, and the result is negative, destructive.

The issue was this: Moses had learned what he needed to learn
in Egypt. There was nothing wrong with the instruction he received
there. It was necessary, I believe, in terms of his leadership.
To lead two to three million people through the Sinai Peninsula
into the Promised Land required that education. His education
was not to be despised; it was in the providence of God. But Egypt
had taught Moses all that it could teach him; now God had to teach
him something entirely different, something new, that he could
only learn through loneliness, humiliation. misery, and despair.

Thus begins the second forty years of Moses' life. He had spent
forty years in training in the Egyptian court, and then spent
forty years training under God's hand in the Sinai desert. For
forty years Moses herded sheep. Moses was a cattleman and despised
sheep, I am sure. He was lonely and homesick. He named one of
his children Gershom, which means "a stranger there".
I do not think he was referring to the fact that he was a stranger
in Midian, for he would have used a word that means "a stranger
here". He was referring to his relationship with the people
in Egypt. He was forgotten, a stranger; no one knew him in Egypt.
Forty years is a long time. Most of us have not even lived that
long. My family took the tour at Alcatraz yesterday, and they
told us of the Birdman of Alcatraz, who spent 39 years in solitary
confinement. Well, Moses was in the desert one year more than
the Birdman of Alcatraz was in solitary.

There is every indication that his marriage was unhappy. Perhaps
he felt that finding a wife in Midian would somehow take away
the pain. But Zipporah comes across throughout the pages of history
as a very tyrannical, hostile woman. In fact, during one of the
most trying periods of Moses' life, he had to send her home. She
was a burden to him. His father-in-law, Reuel (also called Jethro),
was not a great deal of help, either. It was a terrible, terrible
time for Moses.

There is nothing joyful about being in the wilderness for forty
years; but it was God's time. Moses learned through that experience
something he could not have learned any other way. We need to
take that to heart. If you are going through circumstances that
are reminiscent of Moses' circumstances, it is because God has
something to teach you that he cannot teach you any place else.

Chapter 2, verses 23-25, tells us that another king had risen
in Egypt, and by this time oppression was a national policy.

And the sons of Israel sighed because of
their bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because
of their bondage rose up to God. So God heard their groaning;
and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

His covenant was the promise that, through Abraham, he would
make a great nation of them, and he would give them a land, and
that through the patriarchs would come the seed who would bless
the world.

And God saw the sons of Israel [literally, God knew], and God took notice of them.

So, if you find yourself where the children of Israel were,
remember that God sees, and God knows. So he sets about, as recorded
in chapter 3, to send the deliverer to bring his people out of
bondage. At this point, Moses was anything but willing to go.

Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro
his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock
to the west side of the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain
of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing
fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the
bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed.

Probably the bush was one of those gnarled acacia trees that
grow in the desert. There was nothing particularly spectacular
about the bush except that the angel of the Lord appeared in the
midst of it.

So Moses said, "I must turn aside
now, and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned
up." When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God
called to him from the midst of the bush, and said, "Moses,
Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." [Moses thought he was forgotten, but God knew him,
and God saw.] Then He said, "Do not come near here; remove
your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing
is holy ground."

Moses thought it was desert; God said it was holy ground. In
the East they wore shoes or sandals to protect their feet from
defilement, and when they walked into a holy place they would
take off their shoes in order not to defile that place. God said,
"The place you are standing is holy." Moses said, "I've
been herding sheep here for forty years."

He said also, "I am the God of your father, the God of
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Then
Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. And the
Lord said, "I have surely seen the affliction of My people
who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of
their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. So I have
come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and
to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land flowing
with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite
and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite.
And now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me;
furthermore, I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians
are oppressing them. Therefore, come now, and I will send you
to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel,
out of Egypt."

Two important things are brought out in this passage. First,
God says, "I will deliver my people" and "I'm going
to do it through you." Verse 8, "I have come down to
deliver them..." and verse 10, "Therefore, come now,
and I will send you..." That is the only way God chooses
to work--through people. He does not fly Gospel Blimps; he works
through people. And he works through weak, inadequately prepared,
ill-equipped people, because that is the only kind of people he
can find. No one could have been prepared to take on this task.
Not a man on the face of the earth, not even Moses, with all his
training, would have been trained adequately to fulfill that task.
The king of Egypt at this time was a man named Amenhotep II, who
lived in an immense complex at Thebes, a complex much bigger than
the Oakland Coliseum. And Moses was a bit out of practice. After
forty years he had forgotten the court protocol. He was not ready
to walk into a situation like that and proclaim that he was the
deliverer.

Secondly. God (who is never embarrassed to call us to do the
impossible) reminds Moses that he is to deliver the children of
Israel out of Egypt into Canaan. The problem was that the Egyptians
had conquered Canaan. Not only were the Hittites and the Perizzites
and all these other "ites" in the land, but the Egyptians
were there, too. The pharaohs who had preceded Amenhotep II had
conquered all Assyria and Palestine. To deliver the nation of
Israel out of Egypt into Canaan would be to take them from the
frying pan to the fire. There was hardly any place on earth where
there were not any Egyptians. Besides, he had to take two and
a half million people. That is something like twice the population
of San Francisco County. If you were to march that many people
in a column of fours, they would stretch for three hundred and
seventy miles. That is a lot of people to feed and protect. And
they came with their dogs, cats, parakeets, senior citizens, little
children, their mattresses, and all their goods. And remember,
they were slaves. They didn't have an army. The task was impossible.
No one was equipped for a task like that. And God says, "Moses,
I'm calling you. I'm going to deliver my people, and you are going
to do it." So it is understandable that Moses would say,
in verse 11,

"Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh,
and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?"

I am convinced that if God had appeared to Moses forty years
before and handed him this challenge, Moses would have said, "I'm
your man." But by this time in his life he was convinced
that he had nothing to bring to this situation. He did not know
who he was. Today we would say that he had an identity problem.
He had no sense of worth, no value, no resources.

Interestingly enough, God does not tell Moses who he is. We
would. If someone comes to us and says, "I'm not qualified
to do a certain thing," we say, "Oh, yes you are!"
We bring out all the statistics. Here are your assets over here,
and your liabilities here; these are the things that you have
done, and, if you apply yourself, you can do it. You have the
gifts, the training, the ability, the personality. You can do
it. On that basis we decide what things we can do and what things
we cannot do. If we are not equipped, then we are disqualified.
We will not touch anything we are not qualified for. But if we
are adequately trained and equipped, then we will tackle it. But
notice that God does not tell Moses who he is; God just says,
"I am with you."

And he said, "Certainly I will be
with you, and this shall be a sign to you that it is I who have
sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you
shall worship God at this mountain [that
is, Sinai]."

God says two things: I will be with you, and there will be
no proof that I am with you until the deed is done. You have to
act now; the certainty comes later. We want God to vouchsafe his
promises to us so that we can venture ourselves without any step
of faith. God says, "I'm not going to do that. All you have
is my word. I will be with you. Literally, "I am with you."
That is all Moses needs. That is the answer to Moses' question.
He does not need to know who he is; all he needs to know is that
God is with him. Therefore, he is adequate for whatever he needs
to face--even the impossible. Moses has another question in verse
13,

Then Moses said to God, "Behold, I
am going to the sons of Israel, and I shall say to them, 'The
God of your fathers has sent me to you.' Now they may say to
me, 'What is His name?' What shall I say to them?"

Moses' first question is, "Who am I?" and God says,
"It doesn't matter; I am with you." Moses' second question
is, "Well then, who are you? It's nice to know that you're
going along, but so what?" The question that Moses asks is
not, "What is your name?" Moses knew the name of the
Lord, the Covenant God of Israel, was Jehovah, or Yahweh. All
Israel knew that. That name was revealed to the patriarchs. What
he did not know was the meaning of the name. The interrogative
pronoun that he uses means, "explain to me the meaning of
the name." So God explains that his name means "I AM."
The name Jehovah or Yahweh is the third-person singular form of
a verb that means "he is". God says, "I am. I am
whatever you need. That is why it is important that I go with
you. You don't need to reckon on your resources; whatever you
need, that is what I am. Do you need courage? I am courage. Do
you need wisdom? That is what I am. Whatever resource you are
lacking, that is what I am. Therefore, tell them I AM sent you."
That ought to be the pattern of our life (verse 15).

"Thus you shall say to the sons of
Israel, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.'
This is My name forever, and this is My memorial-name to all
generations."

This is the way we ought to approach every problem. He is.
I am not, but he is; therefore, I am. Whatever I need, that is
what God is. Moses is told that he is to go to the elders and
deliver this message. Together they are to go to the king of Egypt
and request that they be allowed to go into the wilderness for
a three days' journey to sacrifice to the Lord. But he is told
in advance that the king of Egypt will not let them go. Moses
still has a problem. He actually did not hear what the Lord said.
The Lord described what would happen during the next few months.
Moses would go to the elders and they would go with him to the
Pharaoh, and the Pharaoh would not let them go. But God said the
Pharaoh would be compelled to let them go, and Moses would deliver
the people. But Moses is still hung up on the first statement,
"You'll go to the elders." Even though God told Moses
He is sufficient to meet his needs, Moses thinks, "The elders
won't believe me. Who am I? If they remember me at all, it will
be as the man who got them into so much trouble before. They won't
believe that I have the credentials to deliver my people."
Have you ever felt that way? "I really don't have the authority
to expect anyone to believe me or to listen. If I just had better
training, or if I was a little brighter, if I could just lose
a little weight, then people would listen to me. If I had just
a little better position in life, a little better paying job,
a little more education, people would listen to me." When
God raises this issue, he does not go into his background to remind
Moses that he has the equivalent of a PhD. He does something else
(verse 2, chapter 4)

And the Lord said to him, "What is
that in your hand?" And he said, "A staff." Then
He said, "Throw it on the ground." So he threw it on
the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from it.
But the Lord said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand and grasp
it by its tail." [not normally
the way to pick up a snake]--so he stretched out his hand
and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand [from this
point on this is always referred to as the staff of God]--"that
they might believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the
God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared
to you." And the Lord furthermore said to him, "Now
put your hand into your bosom." So he put his hand into
his bosom, and when he took it out, behold, it was leprous like
snow. Then He said, "Put your hand into your bosom again."
So he put his hand into his bosom again; and when he took it
out of his bosom, behold, it was restored like the rest of his
flesh. "And it shall come about that if they will not believe
you or heed the witness of the first sign, they may believe the
witness of the last sign. But it shall be that if they will not
believe even these two signs or heed what you say, then you shall
take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground;
and the water which you take from the Nile will become blood
on the dry ground."

These three signs are designated in this passage as a voice.
If you have an American Standard translation, you will note that
in the margin, under side note 2, verse 8, is the word "voice".
These miraculous signs were God's voice to the people. They were
God's affirmation that Moses was the man God had called. God says
that the sign of authority, the credential in our life, is the
capacity to do supernatural, extraordinary things that no one
else can do, that cannot be explained on the basis of our education
or our personality. There was nothing in Moses' past that would
equip him to turn the water of the Nile into blood. The court
wizards could accomplish the first sign, but not the second or
third signs. No one in all the history of mankind has ever been
able to cure leprosy. Moses was able to do something that no one
had ever done before.

God says that the thing that will make people listen to you
is not your office, education, or personality, but your capacity,
as you act in faith, to do these extraordinary things. If you
can be poised and restful and peaceful in the midst of this age,
it is not that you do not understand the situation; it is that
you are tied into a source of power that no one else has. If you
can be peaceful and restful and quiet when your business is falling
apart financially, your home is going to pieces, your kids are
bombarded on every side by every conceivable evil influence, there
is something extraordinary about you. People will wonder, "What
is it that makes that person respond that way?" The great
miracle today is not walking on water or turning staffs into serpents;
it is a supernatural quality of life that is the result of our
awareness that God is.

The pharisees asked Jesus, "What shall we do to do the
works of God?" Jesus said, "This is the work of God,
that you believe on me whom he has sent." Keep on believing;
keep on acting out of my strength; keep on relying upon me. The
result, Jesus said, is that you will do the works of God. That
is the only way to do God's works. How audacious of us to think
that we can do God's works by our own strength. The only one who
can do God's works is God. So as we count on him, people will
look at our lives and see the work of God in us. They will see
God-likeness in the midst of a world that is disintegrating. That
will be our authority. We cannot say, "I'm disqualified because
I don't have the right background, or my appearance is all wrong."
Our authority resides in our faith, and that is what will compel
our hearers.

Moses has another problem in verse 10.

Then Moses said to the Lord, "Please,
Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time
past, nor since Thou hast spoken to Thy servant; for I am slow
of speech and slow of tongue."

Moses says that he has never been able to express himself clearly.
He may have had a speech impediment. He was fearful lest that
inhibit him so that he is unable to fulfill the commission. God
says, "That's no problem to me. In fact, that deficiency
is a created deficiency. I'm the one who made you that way"
(verse 11).

And the Lord said to him, "Who has
made man's mouth? Or who makes him dumb or deaf, or seeing or
blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now then go, and I, even I, will
be with your mouth, and teach you what you are to say."

God says, "I know you are slow of speech. I made you that
way, because it is when you are weak that you are strong."
Paul highlights this strange paradox in 2 Corinthians. Paul had
a similar affliction, in his case probably an eye disease that
was terribly disabling. He thought, "If I could just get
rid of this thing, then I would have power, then my life would
really count." So he besought the Lord to take the affliction
away, and the Lord said, "No. Because my strength is made
perfect in your weakness." So Paul says, "Therefore
I am well content with weakness.. .for when I am weak, then I
am strong." That does not mean we have to go about saying
we are weak; but it is where we begin. I am weak. God is. Therefore
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. There is
no task, no assignment, that is beyond his resources.

Moses has one final problem in verse 13.

But he said, "Please, Lord, now send
the message by whomever Thou wilt."

This sounds very pious, but Moses is not volunteering. This
is the Hebrew idiom that means, "Send somebody else."
Verse 14 says,

Then the anger of the Lord burned against
Moses...

God was not angry when Moses felt weak, when he felt unequipped,
when he lacked the credentials, when he felt impotent. That was
no problem to God. What tied God's hands was when Moses said,
"I'm simply not available; send somebody else." The
great thing about this passage is that God does not leave it there.
He goes on to say that he would use Moses as God in Aaron's life;
he would send Aaron as Moses' associate, and Aaron would be the
spokesman. God would speak through Moses, through Aaron.

The passage goes on to tell us that Moses departed and went
back to Egypt. God not only is determined to fulfill all of his
expectations in us; but he also will see to it that we make ourselves
available. He will not rest until we are willing to submit. God
did not write Moses off. He did not set him aside and say, "All
right, I'll find somebody else." He said, "I'll see
to it that Moses does what I called him to do." So he set
him on the road to Egypt. From the book of Exodus we learn what
this man accomplished. He is THE leader of Israel. Jews look back
to Moses today as the great leader, the one around whom the nation
was formed. Where did his resources come from? Where did his power
to accomplish those deeds come from? It came from the God who
is.

Most of you are facing some circumstance this week that is
way beyond your powers. If you are not, God will see to it that
you do. God is not frustrated by your lack of knowledge, or your
feelings or weakness. The only thing that will frustrate him is
if you say, "I'm just not available." Ian Thomas, in
commenting on this passage, refers to the fact that God appeared
to Moses in a common, ordinary bush, an acacia tree--not a palm
tree, just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill, garden variety desert
bush. The point is that any old bush will do, as long as God is
in it. What has God called you to do this week? Remember, he is.
He is everything you need. And therefore you can do all things
through Christ who strengthens you.

It is good to be reminded again, Father, that we are related
to the One who sees, and who knows, and who is, and that it is
your delight to equip us for every good work. Thank you for creating
us to that end. Thank you in Christ's name, Amen.

Title: The Naming of The Name
By: David H. Roper
Series: For such a Time as This
Scripture: Exodus 2-4
Message 2 of 4
Catalog No: 3464
Date: February 8, 1976
Updated September 7, 2000.